How To Leverage Your Videos On Social Media

Having a tough time getting your name out there? You need to go where the people are; these days, they’re all on social media.

The average person spends two hours per day on these sites – share your visual content on these platforms intelligently, and you’ll gain a greater degree of exposure among people in your niche.

Want to leverage social media to build your brand? Below, we’ll discuss several ways you can use these platforms to accomplish this end.

Tailor content to the network to which you are posting

Before shooting a second of your latest video, take a second to think about the demographics of the social networks where you post. There may be a diversity of users on each platform, but on average, each has average users, if tailored to, can improve your visual marketing results.

Twitter users are more likely to be educated and members of a visible minority, those on Instagram tend to be younger, female, and urban, whilst half of those on YouTube are over the age of 35.

Finally, Facebook is essentially the McDonald’s of social networks: with over one billion users, you’re best off sticking to what you do best by focusing on your niche through targeted advertising.

This will show your video as a suggested post to those in your niche – do this instead of trying to pander to the ‘average Facebook user’, as it is counterproductive to be all things to all people.

Keep them short

In this age of Snapchat and Instagram Stories, attention spans are shorter than ever. Videos used to be ten minutes or longer – these days, you’ll be lucky to find ones two minutes in length.

The emergence of mobile has much to do with this, as users check these devices mostly whenever they have only a minute to spare.

According to market research performed by Hubspot, users watched one-minute videos on Facebook most often, 45-second pieces on Twitter, and 30-second clips on Instagram.

As for YouTube, they recommend making most of your videos two minutes long, as clips of this length have proven to be more popular with site visitors.

This doesn’t mean you should totally abandon longer-form content – by including links to these videos at the end of shorter ones, those engaged by your content will be likely to watch them.

Include subtitles

The increasing use of mobile has also had an effect on how videos are consumed – most notably, users often choose to watch without sound, so they won’t disturb people.

Accommodate them by including subtitles for your videos. This way, users will view your content when they get notified about it, rather than resolving to watch it later (and then forgetting about it).

Even if your video doesn’t involve a person speaking, adding subtitles can also help add context, making it more impactful.

Post when your audience is online

Once you have finished creating your video, all that remains to be done is to post it on a social media network (or networks).

However, you need to do this at the right time – sharing your video whilst your followers are asleep means it will end up getting buried in their feeds, causing many to miss it.

When posting content during the work week, post to Facebook in the early afternoon (1-3 pm), on Twitter around Noon and at 5 pm (coincides with lunch/quitting time), and on Instagram between 8 and 9 am.

If you’re looking to reach the most people, posting at the times listed above will get your content in front of heaps of eyes.

Want to figure out how to use social media to more successfully spread your visual content? My advice is to invest in yourself and get learning new skills.

Adelaide is a passionate writer for the Candlefox education and career network and an advocate for women’s rights in the workplace. She enjoys travel, food and most of all, a good cup of tea at the end of the day.